Month: September 2018

Judge Kavanaugh and his accuser faced off at an unedifying Senate hearing last week. Whatever your political hue, I would hope that you’d agree that the spectacle was a new low point in terms of fact-based civil discourse between the different sides of the political spectrum.

Whichever of them was more convincing to you is going to be largely a function of your previous position during the 2016 election.

The purpose of this blog post is not to attempt to convince you one way or another but to put forward a hypothesis;

The likelihood of Roe vs. Wade being overturned in full or in part has increased significantly as a result of the Democrats’ decisions to hold on to Mrs. Ford’s accusation until so late in the process and the subsequent aggressive tactics to block the Judge’s nomination based on such a low standard of evidence.

In other words, the Democrats may have shot themselves in their collective feet.

Why do I believe this?

Because even the most honest and pure of intentions amongst us is human. Judge Kavanaugh is no exception to this, as his barely-concealed rage last week illustrates. Even if he was previously undecided on whether or not abortion should be ruled legal at a Federal level before his nomination, it’s not a stretch of imagination to suspect he’s changed his opinion during this trial by innuendo.

This is not to say Mrs. Ford is lying about the events of 35 (or thereabouts) years ago; her testimony was convincing, she looked like she believed what she was saying.

Similarly, Judge Kavanaugh looked like he believed what he was saying.

And that’s the point…. a robust legal system does not condemn the accused on the basis of a single witness testimony. In fact, if that’s all there is, such cases don’t make it to trial.

Nonetheless, Judge Kavanaugh has been put through the wringer due to a single witness testimony, deliberately withheld until the last minute.

Why? Why did the Democrats choose this set of tactics?

Roe vs. Wade.

Everything the Democrats have done to block Kavanaugh has had the ultimate goal of protecting the 1973 Supreme Court ruling in Roe vs Wade, the ruling which made abortion legal in the USA, regardless of prevailing State legislation.

That a Supreme Court ruling disappoints one team and delights another is nothing new or surprising. Perhaps the reason the Democrats have chosen such an unprecedented and, frankly, distasteful set of tactics in combating a perceived threat (Kavanaugh hasn’t publicly expressed an opinion to date) to this ruling is that they know Roe vs Wade was a fudge.

If one reads the history to the ruling, it’s clear that the previous status quo was a hotch-potch of policies along the lines of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and turning a blind eye, inconsistently applied by different States.

To many, the ruling was a Federal over-reach, imposing at a Federal level, power the Constitution gave to the States.

If Roe vs Wade was a ruling on something less emotive than abortion, say, the use of wood-fired stoves in built-up areas of habitation, there obviously would be nowhere near as much angst on either side of the debate. Most likely, the ruling would have been successfully appealed long ago and, following its reversal, some States would have passed legislation allowing for the use of wood-burning stoves at differing times of the year and for differing reasons. In other States, using wood-burning stoves in towns would have remained illegal.

Bill’s Opinion

Brett Kavanaugh and his family have had to endure atrocious abuse by bad faith political actors using the faux cover of due process.

Regardless of whether Mrs. Ford was attacked 30-something years ago and regardless of whether Brett Kavanaugh was the attacker, if he is subsequently confirmed as the next Supreme Court appointee, he is going to have to be the most objective human in history to not be biased towards overturning Roe vs Wade should such an appeal reach his office.

I’m not suggesting he should do this but an argument could be made along the lines of, “I will recuse myself from voting on this ruling as the inherent issues during the controversy of my nomination were due to Roe vs Wade and, as a consequence of the resulting personal distress, I now have a conflict of interest“.

Personally, I hope he is nominated and overturns the law at the first opportunity; the Founding Fathers were rarely wrong in the design of the American Constitution and I see no reason why abortion shouldn’t be subject to the proven efficiency of the “marketplace” that the system of States being able to write their own criminal law code provides. If you can’t legally have an abortion in Texas, you could still have one in California, for example.

Unfortunately, the precedent of allowing such a low standard of evidence to be a credible reason to derail a Supreme Court appointment is likely to have long-lasting negative effects that both parties will have plenty of time to regret.

Apparently so. According to Reuters, the USA is equal to Syria for sexual violence to women.

Does this pass the sniff test?

Before we answer that, let’s check out a few countries that aren’t in the 9 listed as worse than the US of A.

In no particular order;

South Sudan

North Korea

Sierra Leone

Libya

Venezuela

Iran

Iraq

Angola

So why is the USA worse for women than these countries?

Because (drum roll);

Oh, do just FUCK OFF.

So, 32,570,000 American women have been raped? Really?

That would certainly explain why there is such a massive exodus of women emigrating from hell holes such as, say, Boston, to claim asylum in Tripoli, Pyongyang, Caracas and Freetown.

Oh, hang on…

Bill’s Opinion

This is a classic “revealed versus expressed preferences” example.

A simple search for tourism numbers to any of the countries on Reuters’ list and my additional options versus those to the USA will tell you everything you need to know about this survey.

You would have few qualms about your teenage daughter holidaying in America. Sierra Leone, however?

One presumes the Cultural Marxists at Reuters simply searched the #MeToo hashtag and decided that every claim of rape equals an actual rape.

In reality, people base their decisions on where to live and where to holiday on more tangible facts, hence why there isn’t a rush to claim asylum on grounds of gender by half the American population of women and why teenage daughters holiday in the USA without their parents lying awake at night wracked with worry.

As stated here previously, Australians have a codeword which, when used by the ruling class, means, “we are going to raid your wallet and hand the contents to our cronies“;

Fair.

Seriously, it’s a stunning example of DoubleSpeak; on face value it seems perfectly reasonable to want things to be “fair”. But without a common agreement on what fair might be and who arbitrates it, we are left with the age old problem of power being wielded by those who have it for the benefit of themselves and their cronies.

Some background for those readers unfamiliar with the Australian state of Venezuela Victoria, it is the most-heavily unionised state in the country, with some fairly militant and unreconstructed 1970s style comrades calling the shots in many areas of life. The Victorians deserve what they get though, as they voted into power Daniel Andrews, a man with zero experience of managing anything more commercially-complex than a local political party branch office.

The move comes are [sic, BI isn’t having a good day today] German food delivery multinational Foodora, under pressure from the tax office and the FWO over how the company classified its workers as independent contractors, was placed in administration as it prepared to shut down in Australia.

The FWO dropped legal action against Foodora over “sham contracting” in its employment contracts as a result.

Bill’s Opinion

The Victorian ratepayers are bloody and bruised enough from Daniel Andrews’ previous dip in to their wallets, but now they are going have to pay for a report that we already know will find that Uber et al are not fair, and then, to add insult to injury, will find that they’ll be taking expensive taxi rides home in future as gig economy companies like Uber will be regulated out of the state.

However, they voted for this bunch of strugglers, so they can enjoy the consequences.

Actually, it has already changed it from “Don’t be evil” to “Do the right thing”.

Regardless, the contents of a leaked memo suggest the mottos are to be considered more a guideline than a non-negotiable rule.

Google has allegedly created a search engine that would censor information that the Chinese government finds objectionable. The memo shows that Google planned to require users to log in to perform searches and the software would then track their location. The memo also said that Google would share Chinese users’ search information with a third-party Chinese company, which could then be available to government authorities.

Oh, that’s nice of them. What might be the consequences of Google handing details of an individual’s search history to a “private company” (if such a thing actually exists in China)?

Nothing to be concerned about, I’m sure. China’s record on human rights and the integrity of their legal system is so impeccable after all.

Bill’s Opinion

I’ve recently been considering weaning myself off Google products.

Despite what people might suggest, they don’t actually have a monopoly on providing many of the services we use on a day to day basis.

The response by Google to the James Damore memo was a major indication that the company has stopped taking their motto(s) seriously.

If this latest leak is correct, perhaps now is the time to find another mail, maps and internet search provider.

Some complete and utter idiot stuck pins into strawberries somewhere between the farm and the supermarkets in Australia a week or so ago.

Because the idiocy is contagious, there then followed a spate of copycat cases and other soft fruit was tampered with, presumably by other parties.

The culprits and their motivation have yet to be identified but significant police resources have been mobilised to apprehend them and throw the full force of the criminal law against them.

“Fair enough”, one might think, “a bad actor commits a crime that deliberately risks bodily harm of others. There’s definitely a law against that with a penalty to fit the crime. Let the police get on with their job and let justice be done”.

Except it’s never that simple in Australian politics.

No, in Australia when something bad happens at a state or federal level, a brave and decisive politician must rush to the nearest phone booth (increasingly harder to find these days), make a rapid change of clothes and emerge, Superman-esque, and announce plans to change or write new law.

This prompts just a couple of questions from curious minds such as ours;

1. How many cases of deliberate food contamination do we think an extra 5 years in jail will prevent? ie will those extra potential years of incarceration be a factor in the mind of a person who has decided to bring needles to work and deliberately stick them in to soft fruit?

2. Will the legislation go against Common Law precedent and be retrospective, or will the current culprits not be subject to the new penalties?

3. How long will it take for this legislative change to be made and will it be in time to be applied in the prosecution of the current culprits?

Bill’s Opinion

There are two ways of looking at this lunacy.

The first and most obvious way to view this is that it is pathetic virtue signalling that will have absolutely no effect, positive or negative, on the current spate of crimes. It’s an incredible piece of Dunning Krugerism by the government to think that, after 803 years of Common Law, suitable legislation doesn’t already exist to cover a situation of deliberate bodily harm.

But let’s ponder more on the situation; consider how much time and resources will be expended to plan this change of law, announce it to the press, have the legal team draft the new legislation, plan the parliamentary time to debate it, sign the legislation and communicate the change to the judiciary.

Now consider what that big parliamentary machine could be doing instead. It could be employed to create far more intrusive laws in areas that would actually impact the general population, ie, the people who wouldn’t stuff needles into fruit. Laws like a tax on energy production, or to force bakeries to bake cakes for same sex marriages, etc.

No, as daft as This Month’s Prime Minister’s idea is, it’s far better that he and his team are spending their time amending previously adequate laws rather than imposing their incompetency into other areas of public life.

“This isn’t fair and it’s contributing to the growing superannuation gap between men and women,” he (Bill Shorten) said.

“Superannuation paid on parental leave is an investment in a better and fairer retirement for Australian women.”

An “investment”? By who? What’s the ROI?

Fairer? By what definition?

Bill’s Opinion

Whenever an Australian politician uses the word “fair”, it’s a safe assumption that someone’s wallet is about to be raided.

Curiously, this crudely political move might backfire on the Australian Labor Party; there’s no hint that the gift will be retrospective, so people who have been on parental leave in the past will not have their pension fund topped up. That might generate just a teeny bit of resentment.

If that describes you, here’s an idea; once the legislation is passed, lodge a claim in the Local Small Claims Court. The threshold there is $10,000. If you took 6 months maternity leave from a $150,000 per annum salaried job, the 9.5% superannuation contribution would be within that court’s purview.

It’s worth a punt.

Lastly, our favourite lesson on the four ways to spend money. Take it away, Milton;

So, poverty is defined as relative to other people, and before receipt of public housing, tax credits, unemployment benefits, Medicare and free schooling.

Of course, when your definition of poverty is based on what everyone else is earning, it’s hardly surprising that statements such as the one above, “Internationally, Australia’s poverty rate remains above the OECD average, despite our relative prosperity” can be written without a hint of irony.

Bill’s Opinion

Relative poverty isn’t poverty, it’s envy.

Anyone who has visited Africa, Asia or South America can tell you what child poverty looks like and it certainly isn’t what Mission Australia claims it is.

I find it highly unlikely that Acoss or Mission Australia were unaware of the statistical obfuscation they had to commit to print T-shirts claiming one in six Australian children live in poverty.

Ok, that’s great that we’ve developed modern medical knowledge to the point where it is possible and even affordable, but, to misquote Lemmy, “just ‘cos you’ve got the power, does it mean you have the right?”

Manda is single and has failed to make a success of any of her long term relationships. The men she met in her 30s “already had families”, which infers they didn’t want to have more children with her (or that was a convenient excuse to end the relationship with her).

Being single is going to make raising twins highly-challenging. Even with logistical support, such as a nanny, there will be gaps in the parenting of those children that she will be unable to fill on her own.

Manda is now a single mother of twins. It’s highly unlikely she’ll find a suitable partner willing to join that family unit in the next couple of decades.

Credit

Manda’s womb is still viable.

Manda has plenty of money.

Erm, that’s it.

Bill’s Opinion

It’s medically possible to put one’s finger on the scales of nature to increase the number of fertile years and enable single women to bear children.

Just because we can, however, doesn’t necessarily mean we ought.

I wish Manda and her daughters all the best in their futures but let’s not kid ourselves that this is an ideal family unit.

There’s a couple of fairly straightforward reasons Manda has had to go down this expensive and sub-optimal route to motherhood.

1. She left it far too late.

2. She didn’t invest enough time and energy into selecting an appropriate partner.

The consequence of these life mistakes is single parenthood, at late middle age, of other people’s children (the sperm and eggs were donated/bought).

She could, of course, chosen to have adopted children to have achieved a similar outcome with the added benefit of lifting two orphans out of institutional care in a third world country.

But, ultimately, Manda’s own words explain why she took this option, albeit in a form of cognitive dissonance;

This month’s Australian Prime Minister has apparently put the lives of transgender kids “in the firing line”, not once but three times already during the first couple of weeks into his 18 month tenure.

What a truly awful human being he must be.

What was it he said or did to put such venerable vulnerable lives in danger? See if you can guess from this handy list;

Gave the armed forces the powers to arrest kids on the street if they are wearing clothing inappropriate to their biological sex.

Gave an interview inciting violence against transgender children.

Whipped up a mob who subsequently recreated Kristalnacht on transgender children.

Wrote a tweet suggesting we stop paying “consultants” to encourage kids to identify as transgender regardless of whether they’ve previously articulated such sentiments or not.

The last one, obviously. This is the age of Victim Olympics, after all. A few alpha-numeric characters on a computer screen saying, “let kids be kids” is now the equivalent of actual violence.

Helpfully, the Grauniad has a guest column by a “Phd candidate in architecture” (which I think means, they’re not only not qualified in biology, psychology or any other ‘ology’ but they’re also not even qualified in architecture yet). There’s more chuckles to be had too as the PhD candidate’s name is Simona Castricum and they’re transgender and presumably were born “Simon”. So, instead of picking the usual female version of “Simon”, i.e. “Simone”, they decided to really underline the feminity they’re seeking by adding the more unambiguous letter “a” as a suffix. I don’t think I’ve ever met a “Simona” before, have you?

Hopefully he’s gone the full monty and had his bits removed too, making the surname so much more accurate.

Anyway, pointless ad hominens aside, here’s further evidence that we are currently living in a world where, as Scott Adams suggests, there are two different movies playing side by side and you’re likely watching a different one to a whole group of other people;

“Some boys have vaginas”? Not on the planet most humans occupy. We have a perfectly-usable noun to describe “boys with vaginas”. Clue: it starts with the letter “g”.

And thank you the Grauniad for pointing out that I’ve missed a further proliferation of the alphabet club;

LGBTIQA+? (the question mark is mine, just to clarify).

Is there a handy reckoning guide one can cut out and in keep in one’s wallet to help remember the rules of demarcation between those various letters and characters? Should we be concerned that the ASCII code is going to run out of characters soon?

Bill’s Opinion

Depending on which study you prefer, the scientific evidence points strongly that, left un-transitioned, most (i.e. >60%) of kids who claim they are transgender before puberty go on to return to identifying as their original gender but are homosexual.

Now, we could give these kids puberty blockers and encourage them to publicly act the part of the other gender but are we really comfortable with making permanent physiological changes and, probably, psychological changes when the chances are no better than a coin toss that they aren’t just experiencing an awakening feeling of being gay?